1st of all, doing tailor or leatherworking as a main (1st) profession is crap. You will get nothing you can use during the lvling up and also, you will lvl your character so fast that the crafted things will be outdated before you even can wear them. The best thing is to start crafting with alchemy. At each lvl you will get something useful.
Anyways, back to the subject.
When you lvl your craft you have to do the last 3 items from the recipes (only those items give you the highest amount of crafting experience which you can check by pressing 'K' and pointing the dotted bar).
For materials that you need you can check resale in NPC vendors on the map your craft lvl is (e.g. I have lvl 8 craft so I go talk to NPC in Victorian Park (Imperial) or Waterfolks in Lightwood (League) and check if they don't have it on resale). You also can check Auction house if someone is selling the items you need or you can ask a high lvled leatherworker if he wouldn't disassemble few items for you or at least lowered the lvl of some high lvl leather. The fastest and cheapest way thou, is to kill mobs on the lvl your craft is so they drop the craft items you need. Thing is that when you have 4 lvl difference between mobs and yourself they will give you nothing. And you cant disassemble any items you want, it can be only the leather/material fragments and the additives like button-hooks, pompoms-looking things etc, not cloths like it was long time ago.
But to answer your query. If you want to be able to use better scissors, etc. but you can't since your craft lvl is to low, then make those items you can do till you have reached the lvl of profession which allows you to change your scissors. The same goes for any other craft, if you cant use it yet, make the ones you can till you have the lvl high enough.
ps. If you are on Imperial side just whisper me in game, I can give you some crafting items you can use.